Grainswest - Winter 2019
Winter 2019 Grains West 12 GMwheatdiscovery revealed important lessons ON JAN. 31, 2018, ALBERTA Agriculture and Forestry notified the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) about the discovery of herbi- cide-tolerant wheat plants found on an oil well access road in southern Alberta. While the event could be described as a non-incident, it did make two things clear: In terms of thoroughness, re- sponsiveness and due diligence, when it comes to managing risk and assessing safety, Canada’s rigorous food safety reg- ulatory system works. There is concern, though, that improvements could be made in terms of communication. Here’s a look at what happened, what steps were taken post-discovery and what lessons were learned in the process. THE DISCOVERY During the 2017 growing season, a her- bicide application contractor found that several wheat plants survived a glypho- sate application. After receiving the report, the Province of Alberta followed up by collecting samples for testing. Determining the plants were indeed GM wheat, the informed the CFIA. The organization’s response was swift and comprehensive. The CFIA’s first step was to determine the origin of the GM wheat plants and the extent of their spread. “When we were notified of this, the CFIA thoroughly examined all plausible leads that related to the discovery and conducted extensive testing,” said Heather Shearer, CFIA Plant Biosafety Office national manager. “We’re confident that GM wheat is not present in the system or present anywhere other than the isolated site where it was discov- ered. This is not a widespread issue.” Since its discovery, the landowner of the site has been collaborating with the CFIA to apply appropriate mitigation measures that are designed to ensure that GM wheat is not present in the environ- ment going forward. “We took a very cautious approach in 2018,” explained Shearer. “To ensure that no wheat is present, the entire field around that access road discovery site was kept fallow in 2018.” The site, said Shearer, was a typical quar- ter section for southern Alberta. Shearer said inspectors visited the site regularly throughout the 2018 growing season. The field in question will remain fallow until the end of the 2020 growing season. No ce- real crops will be grown on the fields in the coming years, and the CFIA will perform regular inspections of the site to verify that no GM wheat is present. While there is little question that the CFIA’s rigorous regulatory system does indeed work, some question how commu- nication surrounding the investigation was handled. COMMUNICATION CONCERNS “We had no concerns whatsoever about the protocols that were developed by the CFIA or the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC),” said Tom Steve, Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC) and Alberta Barley general manager. “They did their job from a technical standpoint. The main concern that we had was actually the process of informing the industry and the customer,” he continued. Steve said industry stakeholders received notice from the Government of Canada on June 14, 2018, in the form of a briefing. This was conducted after the media briefing, which meant AWC was handling media enquiries prior to having received an official advisory about the incident. The way the event unfolded left industry little time to advise major wheat customers. Japan, said Steve, found out Incident resolved quickly but industry critical of THE FARMGATE communication process “We had no concerns whatsoever about the protocols that were developed by the CFIA or the Canadian Grain Commission. They did their job from a technical standpoint. The main concern that we had was actually the process of informing the industry and the customer.” —TomSteve
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